A bunch of us Obamanites thought once Barack was President we could stop worrying about the executive branch continuing to double down on failure.

Boy, were we mistaken.

Tim, nothing screams “I live in a distorted world of entitlement” than choosing Neal Wolin as your number two.

Mr Wolin has the dubious honor of helping to birth the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) Financial Modernization Act, which uleashed the orgy of mergers of banks, insurance companies, and brokerage firms. These mega-corps–think AIG– pioneered the “financial innovations” which have brought the world economy to its knees.

The “best and brightest” on Wall Street and in the Treasury Department. Again, from Matt Taibbi’s article:

The following February, when AIG posted $11.5 billion in annual losses, it announced the resignation of Cassano as head of AIGFP, saying an auditor had found a “material weakness” in the CDS portfolio. But amazingly, the company not only allowed Cassano to keep $34 million in bonuses, it kept him on as a consultant for $1 million a month. In fact, Cassano remained on the payroll and kept collecting his monthly million through the end of September 2008, even after taxpayers had been forced to hand AIG $85 billion to patch up his fuck-ups. When asked in October why the company still retained Cassano at his $1 million-a-month rate despite his role in the probable downfall of Western civilization, CEO Martin Sullivan told Congress with a straight face that AIG wanted to “retain the 20-year knowledge that Mr. Cassano had.” (Cassano, who is apparently hiding out in his lavish town house near Harrods in London, could not be reached for comment.)

On Friday, Michelle Obama will host a ground-breaking for a new White House kitchen garden on the South Lawn. The Obamas will plant an organic garden at the White House, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden during WWII.